Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of supermarket refrigeration & HVAC control. More particularly, embodiments of the present invention provide systems for concurrent and remote management of multiple supermarket refrigeration systems by communicating with different control systems at different locations, translating these various control systems into a single system-friendly generic, format, and making this formatted data available to users without accessing each control system individually in response to a user query. Thus, the invention provides systems and methods for universally, remotely, and/or concurrently managing, monitoring, and/or controlling multiple, and otherwise typically incompatible, legacy and modern supermarket refrigeration control systems in a common operating picture.
Description of the Related Art
Food retailers, especially concerning refrigerated foods, face the difficult challenge of balancing the tasks of providing quality food to their customers, minimizing energy costs associated with maintaining quality product, and increasing or at least not wasting potential profit. Although refrigerated foods are highlighted in this disclosure, the teachings herein are equally applicable to maintaining quality atmospheric conditions for any establishment, such as providing comfortable heating, cooling, safety, and lighting conditions for shoppers, employees, residents, patients, patrons etc. of, for example, shopping malls or other retail locations, office buildings, community centers, retirement homes, and hospitals to name a few. For example, with a single system of the present invention, the control systems that operate the alarm systems, parking lot lighting, refrigeration units, HVAC, and interior lighting systems of every Walmart facility throughout the United States could be controlled, monitored, and managed concurrently.
The digital controls industry, especially as applied to supermarket energy management, is a very fragmented and proprietary market. Control equipment known as Refrigeration Management & Control Systems (RMCS) often varies within a supermarket and/or from store to store at different locations within a supermarket chain. Various legacy control systems include ComTrol, Danfoss EIL, CPC RMCC, and CPC Einstein, for example. Further, the varied methods currently available are traditionally organized around the control systems themselves, along with their communications capabilities, rather than the refrigeration equipment and final products that are the true focus of these management teams.
As a consequence, monitoring and managing the performance and efficiency of the many varied approaches, often even contradictory in their design and usage, is cumbersome, time-consuming, and leads to energy waste. Indeed, in more recent years we as a society have been encouraged to “think green.” Further, it is our responsibility as a society to ensure we do not exhaust natural resources to the extent such resources are no longer available for future generations. One way to slow the onset of or prevent exhaustion of earth's resources is to be cognizant of the rate at which we consume these resources and be proactive in finding ways to decrease our rate of consumption.
Supermarkets consume an incredible amount of the total generated power in the United States. With the proliferation of giant retailers across the nation, our energy consumption as a nation has increased tremendously. One reason for this is that with mom-and-pop type stores, energy consumption can easily be monitored and controlled on location, whereas keeping track of energy waste in multiple retail locations becomes increasingly problematic as the number of store locations increases. For example, if it costs $1 to operate the one light in the restroom of a mom-and-pop type shop and it is accidentally left on overnight and throughout Christmas day when the store is closed, the energy consumption consequences are minimal, $1. Compare this with a similar situation in which the ten lights used to illuminate the restroom in a superstore are accidentally left on over the same period and this occurs at 8,000 superstore locations across the country. Suddenly, the cost of the energy consumption jumps to $80,000 for that same period and the corresponding energy consumption consequence becomes astronomical.
Energy waste is also realized when new, better, more energy efficient systems are made available by OEMs but not embraced by stores. Although a supermarket may want the latest, most energy efficient technology, often times justifying, budgeting, and paying for the cost of a new system and the required training necessarily accompanying it prevents these better systems from being installed. As a result, supermarkets get locked in to a specific system for a period of time and do not have a choice about what equipment they can use, and for cost reasons they are forced to keep their existing, less efficient systems in place until the entire life of the system is used up and/or the equipment becomes obsolete. Indeed, most supermarkets have a collection of legacy equipment, some of which works well and is not in imminent danger of being obsolete. Typically, the equipment was modern at one time, bought in an attempt to determine whose equipment provided the best service. With the devices, systems, and methods of the present invention supermarkets are offered the opportunity to bring all of their equipment into one common, highly usable network, and allow for the replacement/upgrading of obsolete equipment in a reasonable and affordable way releasing them from their current captive status, while still retaining the control features of the original unit.
Since a large amount of potentially wasted energy, and a great deal of unneeded service effort is at stake, a consistent method of viewing and managing these stores, especially their RMCS equipment which consume significant amounts of energy, is highly desired. Modern control optimization allows for tremendous energy savings, without sacrificing food quality or safety. Until now, there has not been an easy way to monitor and fine tune a supermarket's cases and power management. With embodiments of the present invention, one universal interface, through a website, provides apples-to-apples comparisons, real-time monitoring and hides the proprietary communication requirements from the user, while taking advantage of the modern capabilities already built into existing controllers. It is estimated that by using the systems of the present invention to manage the energy consumption of chain-type retailers, we could realize a decrease in the national energy budget of about 2%.